Weaving words and telling tales.

Tag Archives: money

The sudden call from the gastroenterologist was…less than welcome. That bill hanging over my head makes me more than a little nervous. I do not need my treatment cut off. So I impulsively, panickedly, set up a payment plan using money that I may not actually have. The impulse was not all folly–it was set something up or it goes into collection, my account goes into bad standing, and my health…I don’t want to think about it. I’ll take any help I can get.

I have a good feeling my money for payday is already spent, throwing the idea that I had for a business venture out the window.

Speaking of the window, there go the gunshots, and my meds are kicking in. Despite the terror that is the rent and this bill, I’ll sleep deep.

In case you couldn’t tell, my table-making skills have gotten a bit rusty—that thing up there is UGLY. But that’s not the point.

In case you couldn’t tell from the last entry in that list, the bill from the time I got shot came in. In case you ALSO couldn’t tell, there is no way in fucking hell. It’s been knocked down a bit—my insurance pays a little bit of it each month, which is apparently why my prescriptions are variable in cost now—but THAT BILL just got sent to me and there is just No Freaking Way™ that is happening, barring some kind of miracle occurring and me getting this job after all.

So I’m ignoring it. What are they going to do, confiscate my damaged nerves? DO me that favor, you whoresons—maybe I’ll be able to work well enough to pay you back one day…HAHAHAHAHAH…aaah.

The phone’s through already. It seems to go through on different days each month.

The good news is, I did manage to strongarm my internet bill down. But I may or may not have that new job.

Oh, hilarious true story.

I got a notification today that I got into the Google Glass thing—as long as I was on that list I’m like WOO A CHANCE TO TEST DRIVE THIS THING YEAH BETA

Nope. I would’ve needed a MINIMUM of $1500 USD to get started.

So nerdy dream totally deferred, there.

I’ve avoided looking at the options there because I don’t want to give myself a bad case of gear envy. I’ve been lusting after this thing for months, too, thinking how AWESOME it’d be to have my own set of HUD-glasses and crap, testing it out and stuff and dealing with the beta but still, LOOK HOW AWESOME, and then LOOK AT THE COST.

(That title is sung to the tune of the Barenaked Ladies song “One Week,” by the by.)

I wake up this morning mumbling to myself that it’s too damn early to be waking up. Of course, this is my own fault for being up at four in the damn AM, slinging ink, vaping a stimulant, and forgetting about taking the meds. I roll out of bed thinking that a glass of juice would be the perfect thing to get the taste of dry cotton out of my mouth, and also thinking to myself If I hear that damn cucco clucking this morning it’d better be that someone broke their leg in six places and their arm in three and I’m the only one working for the next two weeks.

Sure enough, I hear that familiar “BAWWWWWK-BAWKBUKBUKBUK” while my head’s in the fridge.

“No no no no NO, dammit,” I say, dropping ice in the general direction of my glass. Two cubes make it, one lands in my fuzzy slipper as I slap the lock off of my phone. It’s the call-off message.

This makes a solid week that I haven’t worked. I spend one week snowed into work, and then nothing.

With nothing else to do, I get up and get ready to run errands.

The first trip is to the grocery store. The pharmacy’s in there too. When I get there, there’s two problems:

since it took me so long to raise money to get the prescriptions filled, it’s going to have to be done again, and could I wait twenty minutes please, and

there’s a couple problems with a couple medications, namely that a few aren’t quite covered and one of them is being flat out refused, despite that I need it to combat the extreme TWITCH one of the others has given me.

Fast forward about half an hour, and I’ve plopped $27.71 on medicine.

Food stamps don’t cover everything—if you’re not buying shelf-stable things and going fresh you have to buy things on the fly every once in a while. Today was one of those runs. That ran me $16.09—but luckily it’s for an ingredient that lasts for a month or so.

So today I’m under $43.80.

Luckily, my pops came through with a favor, and spotted me $86. That puts me on the POSITIVE side at $42.20…or, basically where I started when I woke up this morning, if you count the dollar I found in a shoe when I got home.

There’s a minor problem with my insurance that I’m going to have to look into. On top of that, Paypal is being moderately slow about getting the transfers done. We’re hoping that at least SOME of it’s done by payday—even if it isn’t, I’ll SQUEAK past on Thursday for the rent. (Lights can slide by until February…it wouldn’t be the first time.)

…of course, then there’s one more problem that I forgot about. I’ve got a surgery to worry about. I forgot about the birth control in my arm. It’s due to come out. This is covered, but…my arm will be useless for work when that surgery happens! Now, I’ll put this to a ‘cross the bridge when I come to it,’ but…I. DON’T. LIKE. SURGERY. Granted, I like the clusterfuck that is my untreated hormone levels even less (I WAS disabled without it pretty much), but still. Knives that I don’t get to look at and go “ooh pretty” at, eeew.

…on the upside, my folks will finally shut up and stop trying to micromanage my ovaries when they find out the rod’s coming out next month. >.>;

If you’ve ever worked in a service industry—foodservice, hospitality, hosting (not as in a host club, more in the sense of the part of the restaurant gig where you show people where they sit and do any gimmicky things, as opposed to the cooking) then you run into many, many people. Often, many of these many, many people have unseen pathogens, bugs, and other assorted foreign icky things on them. And even when they don’t…

The money does.

Money is easily the filthiest thing that you come into contact with on a daily basis. It changes hands over and over, and never does it see the kiss of saponins and dihydrogen monoxide…

Henh? What? Oh. That’s soap and water.

Though washing coins is a dicey proposal—fail to dry pennies properly and they take on a verdigris shell—bills are much easier to handle. Since paper money is actually not made of paper, but rather a combination of cotton and linen, your standard “paper money” can actually be cleaned and sanitized. (Ever wash a pocket full of money and it came back crispy and dry and hard to use? This is why.)

Note: Keep in mind the general condition of your paper bills. If the bills look like they’ve seen better days, I’d recommend NOT using the first half of this trick—you could still do the second part, the actual sanitization part.

The Process

Run a sink of water—or use a bucket. You don’t need much. Add a bit of detergent—nothing top-shelf, considering that this is going to be (ideally) change

Take the “paper money” and check it for damage. Bills that seem a little thin or have a LOT of creasing are a “try this at your own risk” affair.

Take the bills in decent condition and pop them in the water. To wash them, simply agitate the water a bit with one hand until either the bills look cleaner or the water doesn’t change as much in color. (Don’t be surprised if nothing seems to come off; a lot of the schmutz that paper money appears to have is actually just an artifact of the ink used in manufacture.)

Take the money out and lay it flat on something that absorbs water, like a hand towel. Pat it until it doesn’t drip.

If your money’s in lousy shape, the above steps can be skipped. Now you just take an iron and the towel and iron the money until it is dry. OR, if you have a flat-iron that doesn’t have the chops to be used on your hair anymore, you can use that. This method can also be used to iron a little flip into the end of a bill to make it easier to feed into a vending machine.

That’s it.

I know this sounds weird, and maybe a bit OCD, but—working in hospitality, I am acutely aware of the things that money comes into contact with, and so I like to keep it clean and neat. An extra bonus of this money-laundering (haha!) is that neat and flat bills take up far less space in one’s wallet. 🙂